U.N. Sponsors Arab Tours of U.S. Nuclear Reactors

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Paul Sperry

WASHINGTON -- To help fight nuclear terrorism, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham last month pledged $1.2 million in additional funds to a United Nations agency that sponsors foreign nationals -- including some from Arab terrorist states -- to tour U.S. nuclear reactors.

The tours are part of a little-known federal course that trains foreign nationals in security techniques used at U.S. nuclear sites.

Security experts from Sandia National Laboratory, one of the Energy Department's three nuclear-weapons research labs, teach the two-week course every other spring.

Despite the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the course will be offered again this spring, a lab spokesman told WorldNetDaily.

"Plans remain in place for the International Training Course to be offered April 28 through May 16," said Rod Geer of Sandia.

Under a nuclear nonproliferation law signed by President Carter, Energy is obligated to share physical-protection technology with the 133 member states of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, which is headed by Mohamed el-Baradei and based in Vienna, Austria.

Six of IAEA's members -- Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Cuba and Sudan -- show up on the State Department's terrorist blacklist. Afghanistan also is a member.

Since 1978, Albuquerque, N.M.-based Sandia has presented the course 14 times to more than 400 participants from 57 countries, Geer says.

Islamic countries represented include Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, says Sandia's Basil Steele, a course instructor.

"We have everybody coming here," he said, with the last group passing through in May 2000.

The international security classes, which used to run three weeks, are held at the Marriott Hotel in Albuquerque. They cover sensors, cameras, entry and access controls, response-force communications and other methods to protect nuclear facilities and materials from sabotage or theft.

After classes, participants are taken on "field trips" to some of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's facilities, Steele says.

"They go out to an NRC site to tour it, to see security there, and understand how they practice security," he said.

Steele would not name the nuclear-reactor sites they visit, other than to say they're west of New Mexico.

Palo Verde nuclear-power plant in Arizona is the closest to New Mexico. It's one of 86 nuclear sites protected by a no-fly zone recently ordered by the Federal Aviation Administration in the wake of the hijackings.

A spokeswoman in IAEA's New York office acknowledges the risk of sharing security techniques with potential Arab terrorists, who may be using the U.N. invitation only to scout U.S. nuclear facilities for weak areas to penetrate.

But she says the agency weighs that against the benefit of helping foreign nationals safeguard nuclear materials in their countries from terrorists (even though some of the countries themselves sponsor and harbor terrorists).

She says IAEA does not blackball any member from participating, and provides rosters of participants to Energy.

"We encourage our member states who host such meetings to allow entry for all nationalities," she asserted.

The IAEA spokeswoman demurred that the State Department is the final check, since it grants visas to those on its roster.

Steele says that, to the best of his knowledge, federal authorities haven't scrubbed the roster of 400-plus foreign nationals who have participated in the course over the past 23 years, for matches to terrorist watch lists. Authorities recently audited another Energy training program, started by the Clinton administration, that teaches Yemenites, among other Arabs, security techniques at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque.

Former Energy security officials say they repeatedly expressed their reservations about letting "rogue-state types," as one put it, inspect security systems at U.S. nuclear sites under the IAEA program.

"We objected on a number of occasions to the kinds of things they were training these guys," said a former senior Energy official, who says his warnings fell on deaf ears at Energy's headquarters during the Clinton administration.

He says the course materials overlap with a lot of the security procedures in place at Sandia and other nuclear labs.

"The labs pulled heavily from the procedures in the books that they prepared for the course. So when you went through that course, you pretty well knew what was going on with security at the labs," he said. "I mean, you could see the procedures and overlays."

He said a supplement to the basic course includes "identifying weaknesses and vulnerabilities" in commercial security systems.

"We raised some issues about training some of these foreign nationals, particularly ones from the Middle East," the official said. "They were teaching them to black out systems, which they could use against us at the labs."

Steele says Washington OKs all materials used by Sandia, which is run by Lockheed-Martin Corp. Its subsidiary, Sandia Corp., runs security at the lab.

"We scrub materials with DOE," he said. "We say, 'This is what we want to teach the international world. Is everything cool?' And they say, yes or no."

Conspirators' Theories: In their own words

Compiled by Hari Heath

Conspiracy theories abound in our modern society. That's easy to understand. There are many organized efforts to deprive us, individually and collectively, of our lives, liberties and property. Those who “believe” in conspiracy theories often find themselves socially demonized as whackos on the lunatic fringe. This is natural. Most people prefer not to think, and avoid anyone who makes their little world uncomfortable with thoughts about conspiracies. And those who are actually engaged in such conspiracies often demonize the messenger in an effort to avoid being exposed.

Conspiracy is an often misused word. We tend to view “conspiracy” as a major organized effort for control on a global scale. But conspiracy can also be simply defined as two or more persons planning or committing an illegal act or unlawfully depriving another of their rights or liberties. It need not be as sophisticated as the mental image conjured up by the phrase “conspiracy theory.”

But let's face the facts. There are major “conpiracies” engaged in the business of world domination and subjugation. The Bilderbergers, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, Club of Rome and many others, do exist. It's not just a “theory.” What are the “theories” promoted by the people who are conspiring to to accumulate the power, wealth and resources of the world? How do they view humanity and what do they have in store for us? Lets find out “in their own words” and the words of those who study them.

The following was compiled with the help of of

www.whatreallyhappened.com:

The politics of power

“Power is the great aphrodisiac.” -- Henry Kissenger, New York Times, January 19, 1971.

“We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labor that is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories.” -- Cecil Rhodes, “founder” of Rhodesia

“... somehow, we find it hard to sell our values, namely that the rich should plunder the poor.” -- former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles

“It is money, money, money! Not ideas, not principles, but money that reigns supreme in American politics.” -- Senator Robert Byrd, West Virginia

“I want to scare the hell out of the rest of the world.” -- U.S. General Colin Powell talking about U.S. military power prior to the Gulf War in 1991

“Short, successful military adventures are as effective as the Super Bowl in diverting people's attention from unpleasant truths.” -- John Stockwell, former CIA official

“We need a common enemy to unite us.” -- Condoleeza Rice, National Security Advisor, March 2000

“ The people of the world genuinely want peace. Some day the leaders of the world are going to have to give in and give it to them.” -- Dwight Eisenhower, U.S. president 1953-1961

“When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical constitution with a radical bill of rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly.... What's happened in America today is too many people live in areas where there's no family structure, no community structure and no work structure. And so there's a lot of irresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it....” -- President Bill Clinton

“Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.” -- NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani

“We are potentially the most dangerous agency in the country.” -- FBI Director Louis Freeh, to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, 1997 “The major function of secrecy in Washington is to keep the U.S. people ... from knowing what the nation's leaders are doing.” -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author

“How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think.” -- Adolph Hitler

“You know the one thing that is wrong in this country? Everyone gets a chance to have their fair say.” -- President Bill Clinton

“Others are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves... So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations...It's real, and that's the reason why we have to intensify our [counterterrorism] efforts.” -- Secretary of Defense William Cohen at an April, 1997, counterterrorism conference sponsored by former Senator Sam Nunn

“If they do it, it's terrorism, if we do it, it's fighting for freedom.” -- a U.S. Ambassador in Central America in the 1980s, asked to explain how such U.S. actions as the mining of Nicaragua's harbors and bombing of airports differed from the acts of terrorism that the U.S. condemned around the world

“I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes. The moral effect should be good...and it would spread a lively terror....” -- Winston Churchill commenting on the British use of poison gas against the Iraqis after World War I

“[The Third World War] is a war that has been fought by the United States against the Third World. It might also be called the Forty-Year War, like the Thirty-Year and Hundred-Year Wars in Europe, for this one began when the CIA was founded in 1947 and continues today. As wars go, it has been the second or third most destructive of human life in all of history, after World War I and World War II.” -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author “I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.” -- Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, about Chile prior to the CIA overthrow of the democratically elected government of socialist President Salvadore Allende in 1973

“The great object of American foreign policy ought to be the restoration of a more normal political world, a world in which those states possessing the elements of great power once again play the role their power entitles them to play.” -- Robert W. Tucker, political scientist, 1980 “

The greatest crime since World War II has been U.S. foreign policy.” -- Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General

“A world in which others controlled the course of their own development ... would be a world in which the American system would be seriously endangered.” -- Benjamin Cohen

“Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government.” -- Henry Kissinger speaking at Evian, France, May 21, 1992 Bilderburgers meeting. Unbeknownst to Kissinger, his speech was taped by a Swiss delegate to the meeting.

“We have come to recognize that there are potentially desirable limits to economic growth. There are also potentially desirable limits to the indefinite extension of political democracy...A government which lacks authority ...will have little ability, short of cataclysmic crisis, to impose on its people the sacrifices which may be necessary..” -- 1975 Trilateral Commission Report on the Governability of Democracies

“Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If the United States is to survive, long-standing American concepts of 'fair play' must be reconsidered. We must develop effective espionage and counterespionage services and must learn to subvert, sabotage and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated, and more effective methods than those used against us. It may become necessary that the American people be made acquainted with, understand and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy.” -- World War II Gen. James Doolittle explaining in a secret 1954 report to President Eisenhower why CIA covert operations were needed and what they entailed. From Katherine S. Olmstead's book - Challenging the Secret Government, 1996

“Coming to grips with ... U.S./CIA activities in broad numbers and figuring out how many people have been killed in the jungles of Laos or the hills of Nicaragua is very difficult. But, adding them up as best we can, we come up with a figure of six million people killed -- and this is a minimum figure. Included are: one million killed in the Korean War, two million killed in the Vietnam War, 800,000 killed in Indonesia, one million in Cambodia, 20,000 killed in Angola ... and 22,000 killed in Nicaragua. These people would not have died if U.S. tax dollars had not been spent by the CIA to inflame tensions, finance covert political and military activities and destabilize societies.” -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author

“Military intervention to maintain the global status quo will become a constant feature of international relations, whether this is justified in terms of fighting drugs, fighting terrorism, containing “rogue states,” opposing “Islamic fundamentalism,” or containing China.” -- Walden Bello, sociologist and author, International Socialist Review, Aug/Sep 2001, p8

“We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.” -- George Kennan, head of U.S. State Department Policy Planning Staff, 1948

“But what counter-insurgency really comes down to is the protection of the capitalists back in America, their property and their privileges. U.S. national security, as preached by U.S. leaders, is the security of the capitalist class in the US, not the security of the rest of the people.” -- Philip Agee, CIA Diary, p562

“If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.” -- Secretary of State Madelaine Albright describing her vision of America's role in the world

“America must prevent other states “from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order....We must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” -- Pentagon's Defense Planning Guide for 1994-1999

“ Scare the hell out of the American people.” -- Senator Arthur Vandenburg, telling President Truman what the he needed to do in order to to tax the American people to pay for the weapons and covert activities of the U.S. National Security State

“It is the function of the CIA to keep the world unstable, and to propagandize and teach the American people to hate, so we will let the Establishment spend any amount of money on arms.” -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author “[Nearly 70% of the military budget] is to provide men and weapons to fight in foreign countries in support of our allies and friends and for offensive operations in Third World countries .. Another big chunk of the defense budget is the 20% allocated for our offensive nuclear force of bombers, missles, and submarines whose job it is to carry nuclear weapons to the Soviet Union... Actual defense of the United States costs about 10% of the military budget and is the least expensive function performed by the Pentagon...” -- Rear Admiral Gene LaRoque, U.S. Navy retired

“The two-war strategy is just a marketing device to justify a high [military] budget.” -- Retired Air Force Chief of Staff, Merrill McPeak

“Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear -- kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor -- with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it ...” -- General Douglas MacArthur, 1957 “Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs (lesser developed countries)? I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.... I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly under polluted; their air quality is vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City.” -- Lawrence Summers World Bank economist and Deputy Secretary of Treasury, in a 1991 internal memorandum

“... the United States has given frequent and enthusiastic support to the overthrow of democracy in favor of “investor friendly” regimes. The World Bank, IMF and private banks have consistently lavished huge sums on terror regimes, following their displacement of democratic governments, and a number of quantitative studies have shown a systematic positive relationship between U.S. and IMF / World Bank aid to countries and their violations of human rights.” -- Edward S. Herman, economist and media analyst

“The whole fabric of society will go to wrack if we really lay hands of reform on our rotten institutions. From top to bottom the whole system is a fraud, all of us know it, laborers and capitalists alike, and all of us are consenting parties to it.” -- Henry Adams, American historian, 1838-1918

“Those who own the country ought to govern it.” -- John Jay, American statesman and first Chief Justice of US Supreme Court, 1745-1829

“If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.” -- Woodrow Wilson, presidential candidate,1912 -The Nation magazine, July 3, 2000, p5

Corporate Government?

“If the world operates as one big market, every employee will compete with every person anywhere in the world who is capable of doing the same job. There are lots of them and many of them are hungry.” -- Andrew Grove, president of Intel Corp., in his book “High Output Management”

“A considerable proportion of the developed world's prosperity rests on paying the lowest possible prices for the poor countries' primary products and on exporting high-cost capital and finished goods to those countries. Continuation of this kind of prosperity requires continuation of the relative gap between developed and underdeveloped countries - it means keeping poor people poor. Increasingly, the impoverished masses are understanding that the prosperity of the developed countries and of the privileged minorities in their own countries is founded on their poverty.” -- Philip Agee, CIA Diary, p595

“The dream of the corporate empire builders is being realized. The global system is harmonizing standards across country after country - down toward the lowest common denominator. Although a few socially responsible businesses are standing against the tide with some limited success, theirs is not an easy struggle. We must not kid ourselves. Social responsibility is inefficient in a global free market, and the market will not long abide those who do not avail of the opportunities to shed the inefficient. And we must be clear as to the meaning of efficiency. To the global economy, people are not only increasingly unnecessary, but they and their demands for a living wage are a major source of economic inefficiency. Global corporations are acting to purge themselves of this unwanted burden. We are creating a system that has fewer places for people.” -- David Korten, economist and internationalist

“We are entering a new phase in human history -- one in which fewer and fewer workers will be needed to produce the goods and services for the global population.” -- Jeremy Rifkin, economist

“As an economy measures performance in terms of the creation of money, people become a major source of inefficiency. “ -- David Korten, economist and internationalist

“Corporations have been enthroned .... An era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people... until wealth is aggregated in a few hands ... and the Republic is destroyed.” -- Abraham Lincoln, American president, 1861-1865

“American capitalism, based as it is on exploitation of the poor, with its fundamental motivation in personal greed, simply cannot survive without force - without a secret police force. Now, more than ever, each of us is forced to make a conscious choice whether to support the system of minority comfort and privilege with all its security apparatus and repression, or whether to struggle for real equality of opportunity and fair distribution of benefits for all of society, in the domestic as well as the international order. It's harder now not to realize that there are two sides, harder not to understand each, and harder not to recognize that like it or not we contribute day in and day out either to the one side or to the other.” -- Philip Agee, CIA Diary, p597

“A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.” -- Howard Scott

On the Media:

“Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have.” -- Richard Salent, Former President CBS News.

“One cannot wage war under present conditions without the support of public opinion, which is tremendously molded by the press and other forms of propaganda.” -- General Douglas MacArthur

“Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail. Without it nothing can succeed. He who molds opinion is greater than he who enacts laws.” -- Abraham Lincoln

“You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war.” -- publisher William Randolph Hearst's attributed instructions to artist Frederic Remington in Havana, Cuba.

“One of the intentions of corporate-controlled media is to instill in people a sense of disempowerment, of immobilization and paralysis. Its outcome is to turn you into good consumers. It is to keep people isolated, to feel that there is no possibility for social change.” -- David Barsamian, journalist and publisher

“Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship.” -- William Blum, Rogue State

“ I have the greatest admiration for your propaganda. Propaganda in the West is carried out by experts who have had the best training in the world -- in the field of advertizing -- and have mastered the techniques with exceptional proficiency ... Yours are subtle and persuasive; ours are crude and obvious ... I think that the fundamental difference between our worlds, with respect to propaganda, is quite simple. You tend to believe yours ... and we tend to disbelieve ours. “ -- a Soviet correspondent based five years in the U.S.

“The propaganda system allows the U.S. Ieadership to commit crimes without limit and with no suggestion of misbehavior or criminality; in fact, major war criminals like Henry Kissinger appear regularly on TV to comment on the crimes of the derivative butchers. “ -- Edward Herman, Z magazine Dec 1999 p38

Final Views

“The dream of capitalism is to co-opt people with higher living standards without redistributing any wealth. Without co-optation, widespread repression is the only guarantor of gross inequality.” -- Holly Sklar, from her book Trilateralism

“Since it was created in 1995, the WTO has ruled that every environmental, health, or safety policy it has reviewed is an illegal trade barrier.” -- Public Citizen report, titled 'Whose Trade Organization? Corporate Globalization and the Erosion of Democracy.” (from The Progressive magazine, January 2000, p 8)

“ We are witnessing an unprecedented transfer of power from people and their governments to global institutions whose allegiance is to abstract free-market principle, and whose favored citizens are soulless corporate entities that have the power to shape and break nations.” -- Joel Bleifuss, In These Times magazine, September 2001, p1

“F[***] your Parliament and your Constitution. We pay a lot of good American dollars to the Greeks, Mr. Ambassador. If your Prime Minister gives me talk about Democracy, Parliament and Constitutions, he, his Parliament, and his Constitution may not last very long.” -- President Lyndon Johnson to a Greek Ambassador, 1970s

U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright said “Get some new lawyers” to British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook when he told her he was informed that the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was illegal under international law.

Note: Can we really dismiss the great “conspiracy” and its many sub-conspiracies as mere theories? Are the demonization of the messengers as “conspiracy theorists” really just a conspiracy to avoid the truth -- at all costs? The conspiritors are organized; they are out to get us and everything in the world that can be owned. It's not just a theory anymore.

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